Advocacy Groups Sue to Block Alabama Immigration Law

Lately, there’s been a predictable pattern to immigration enforcement.

Cities or states pass get-tough-on-illegal-immigration laws, contending the laws are necessitated by the federal government’s lax enforcement of illegal immigration.

Advocacy groups then challenge the local laws in court on the grounds that they encroach on the federal government’s authority to decide how to police American borders. Round and round we go — wash, spin, dry, repeat.

Federal judges have curbed local immigration laws in Georgia, Utah, Indiana and Arizona, amid constitutional challenges, as we noted here.

Now, it’s Alabama’s turn to wade into these turbulent legal waters.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and other advocacy groups today filed suit in federal court in Huntsville, Alabama, challenging the state’s new immigration law, which makes it a crime to be in Alabama without valid immigration documentation. The law also authorizes state police to verify the immigration status of people arrested.

Here’s a report from The Birmingham News about the suit, which contends that the Alabama law interferes with federal authority over immigration matters in violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. The law is due to take effect in September.

“Alabama has brazenly enacted this law despite the clear writing on the wall: Federal courts have stopped each and every one of these discriminatory laws from going into effect,” Cecillia Wang, the director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. The ACLU joined in bringing the litigation. “Local Alabama communities and people across the country are shocked and dismayed by the state’s effort to erode our civil rights and fundamental American values,” Wang said. (The complaint can be seen here.)

Alabama state representative Mickey Hammon, who sponsored the bill in the state legislature, told The Birmingham News that “it is no surprise that liberal groups working to shield those who live here illegally are trying to block implementation of our state immigration statute.”

He said the legislation was carefully worded to pass constitutional muster.

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